Comment on Beteille.

The article presents a comment on a previous article that appeared in the September 1996 issue of the British Journal of Sociology. According to the author, the more interesting issues raised by sociologist Andre Beteille's paper have less to do with the mismatch between class and status than with the question of how two conceptions of status, the one focusing on unequal social esteem and the other on the equal rights of citizenship should be related to each other in a general theory of social stratification since it is not unreasonable to anticipate some difficulty when the same general concept is used to describe a major aspect of inequality and also an antidote to it. The common feature of status relations in all societies is that they are exhibited fundamentally through acts of defense, acceptance and derogation. But such interactions vary according to how they are sanctioned and maintained, and the kinds of privileges and disabilities with which they are associated. No one would wish to deny that within the limits set by the rights of citizenship, inequalities of esteem, and more particularly the social networks in which they are grounded, continue to exert their influence for the reasons Beteille so well adduces.